I'm FULL!

Thanksgiving was a quiet affair at the grace house. This was the first year that we had no family over. It was a little weird and I thought the kids would be disappointed.

Turns out, I was WRONG! We had a wonderful time.

We started the day with the parade. No Thanksgiving was complete without the Macy's day parade. I put the turkey in the oven and then fixed yummy cinnamon rolls and eggs for breakfast. (you know the pillsbury cinnamon rolls that come in the tube? That's a tradition in our house for all holidays)

About noon, the wildchild and I started cooking the rest of the meal. I fixed the stuffing. The wildchild? She fixed the mashed potatoes and the yams (with marshmallows) and the green bean casserole. We also had cranberries and rolls. It was great! The wildchild listened to music and dances around the kitchen. We kept peeking out at Bossman to see if he would notice if we did a crazy dance, and kept laughing when he didn't. There was lots of joking and laughing and it was just such fun.

So, ever head of "black" Friday? You know those crazy people you see on the news that are up at o'dark hundred so they can do some shopping?

Bossman and I decided to be one of the crazys.

We got the paper the day before, we studied all the ads. We wrote down what we wanted from each store. We decided which store we would go to first.

This morning, we got up and 4:30, so we could go to wally-world first. They were going to open at 5. We had our list, we checked it twice and out the door we went.

I was surprised at the amount of people that were out driving around at such an early hour but NOTHING and I mean, NOTHING compared to how many people were waiting in line at wallyworld. Oh MY! The line was at least a half-mile long. There were police trying to control the crowd. It was about 10 to 5. I couldn't believe my eyes.

We decided that NOTHING was THAT important. We decided that since we were up, why not head to Target and see what sort of line they had. They were not suppose to open until 6, so we were hoping it wouldn't be too bad. Target had the stuff I REALLY wanted at REALLY good prices.

We got to the big red store at about 5:15. The line was not too bad. It hadn't yet snaked around to the back of the store, as a matter of fact, it hadn't even reached the garden department yet, so we figured it wouldn't be too bad. We got in line and everyone around us was laughing and joking and such. We discussed how crazy the wal-mart people were for waiting in such a horrid line. It was still dark outside, but everyone was quite friendly and happy.

About 15 minutes before the store opened, they had some workers come out and give us a map showing the floor plan of the store and wear the most hottest items in the ad would be located in the store. This was incredibly helpful as some of the stuff I was looking for was located in the middle of the clothes departments on pallets.

Bossman and I split up our list. He took the toys, I took the other stuff. At 6am on the dot, the doors opened and the line moved right into the store. We each got our stuff and met up in like 10 minutes. We happened to be close to the pharmacy department and low and behold, there were cashiers there. Nobody knew they were there, so we checked out all our stuff and were in our car by 6:15. Can you believe it? It was fantastic and we got everything on our list! I was so happy!

We then hit Kmart, and although it was crowded, it wasn't bad and again we got everything we wanted and were out the door within 30 minutes.

By this time we are hungry. We hit a fast food place, which was empty and got some food and used the restroom. Then we decided, what the heck, lets see what walmart looks like now.

We drive through the parking lot and notice that the door where they were first letting people in, still had a huge line. We decided that we weren't going to wait to get into that store, but as we got to the other side of the store we noticed that the garden section door was letting people in and there was no line, people were just walking right in. Huh? Why was there a long line on the other side? Who knows what people were thinking. In any case, we decided to chance it and go in. GAH! Everyone in our entire town was in Wallyworld. They had to be. I mean, I've NEVER seen such chaos. We headed back to the photo department as I really, really wanted to get a couple of people some digital photo frames. You know, the kind where you and put in a memory card and then the frames shows a slide show of all your pictures? They were on sale for only 39 dollars and I really wanted them. I was so happy to see they had a whole pallet full of them.

See, I didn't think we'd be going to walmart, so I just bought ONE of those frames at Target, but it was 59 and it was smaller. So, guess who's going back to Target sometime soon to return the frame?

Anyway, besides having everyone in the entire world in walmart, we had to wait for 45 minutes in line. That was, by far, the worst part of the morning. But, I got my frames and a couple of other goodies and I was happy.

We were home by 8:45 and I was ready for a nap by 9. I would say that all in all, I had a pretty successful day!

So how was your Thanksgiving and were you crazy like me and braved the stores OR did you opt to sleep in?

Either way, I hope your holiday was GREAT!